#metal grinder

[anim-ttrpgs]

"All our projects" so there's other ANIM projects in production? anything you're able to talk about?

Yes, we plan to have a long-running career in the TTRPG space, and have several backburnered!

I’m just gonna rapid-fire these off the top of my head. We don’t know exactly which one of these is coming after Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy is fully released, because it is actually our patreon subscribers that vote on that.

Mastadon(title pending)

Yes, this is intentionally misspelled though we might change that in the future in case it hinders search results and stuff. This is a world where dark fantasy and 90s retro-futurism collide, literally. Think of knights with machine guns, space marines with enchanted swords, high-calibre rounds leaving dents in mythril breastplates, and men-at-arms on cybernetic horses. In the distant future of 2016, a scientific experiment on a lunar research station opened a portal to another world. At the same time, in a dimension of sorcery and feudalism, a council of wizards opened a portal to another world, and explorers from each land found themselves in the same mysterious place.

Cultures and technologies have clashed and mixed in these mysterious lands since. The PCs are mercenaries, taking odd, usually violent, jobs to get by.

Gameplay-wise it’s largely a combat-focused dungeon crawler emulating retro-FPS combat in TTRPG form, with an emphasis on making every type of gun feel totally unique by tying them to entirely different dice mechanics, which in turn makes warriors using these guns strategize entirely differently.

Bone Grinder

Bone Grinder is a “dumber” game, but still with an emphasis on combat. It has a notably more punk and metal aesthetic. Imagine a rocker with a mohawk and leather jacket killing a demon with an axe guitar that is also actually an axe. One of the core mechanics is that players will “bone” the game master by “throwing the bones” at them, which means literally trying to hit them with dice. A successful hit will add a bonus to whatever dice roll comes up when the thrown die lands. When it is the monsters’ turns, the game master will throw that same die right back at them. So if you throw a D6, that’s a D6 attack coming back at your PC next turn. If you throw a D20, that’s a D20 attack coming back at your character next right, so you better make it count, better kill ‘em in one shot!

(We recommend using plastic dice for this one, no metal dice!)

Death Bed

This is another working title, and it is a very serious attempt to emulate Dark Souls and Dark Souls style combat in a turn-based TTRPG in response to the abysmal Dark Souls: The Role-Playing Game that was just a lazy D&D5e book.

This game will be a bit more OSR-y, with D20 roll-under mechanics like old-school D&D for skill checks, and very simple attack determinants. It will have an emphasis on predicting enemy movement, stamina management, and choice between blocking or dodging attacks. It will also feature a system whereby the PCs are not permanently dead after being killed, but do “hollow” after each death. There are several stages of hollowing, each with downsides and upsides. Fully alive PCs will be more nimble, alert, and powerful, but stand out more to mindless hollow enemies, drawing more aggro. More hollowed PCs will have stat debuffs, but hollows are less likely to attack other hollows, giving them less aggro priority. Of course, if a PC dies too many times without restoring their life force, they will become a mindless hollow themselves, becoming an enemy that the party must slay if they want to recover that PC’s equipment.

Untitled Mushroom Game

A working title of course. This game takes a lot of inspiration from the earlier Paper Mario games, and like Bone Grinder, it will have actual physical things you can do with the dice to gain bonuses to your characters’ attacks, which is meant to emulate the “action commands” from Paper Mario in TTRPG format. One example would be building a larger dice pool for an attack based on how many D6s you can stack into a tower before they fall down, with the tower falling down constituting the rolling of the dice.

Eureka Adventure Modules Vol. 2

(Vol. 1 is the set of adventure modules that are coming with the Kickstarter.) Eureka fully releasing won’t mean we’re done with it. We plan to support all of our games for as long a time as possible with new adventure modules and other supplements. (But expect the other supplements to be very cheap if not outright free. We don’t want to make Eureka a game where you have to buy 15 $50 books just to have the full experience.) This will be a set of 5, 10, maybe more pre-written adventure modules for use with Eureka. For a few teasers, one of our ideas features the PCs getting stranded in the Mojave desert, one of them features the PCs getting trapped in underground drainage tunnels with a mysterious creature stalking them, and more horrifying mysteries.

The Eureka Mobster Manual

Another working title, but it’s pretty catchy. This will act as a “monster manual” for Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy, featuring prémisse stats and GMing advice mundane NPCs like cops, mafia enforcers, hapless bystanders, etc. and also actual monsters, both human and inhuman. One of the monsters I am most excited about introducing is actual demons. Not just some red guy with horns, in fact they’re likely to be completely invisible. I know this term gets thrown around a lot by people who don’t know what it means, but in Eureka demons will be more “biblically accurate.” Think more The Exorcist and less DOOM. A demon doesn’t want to go “blahrarawa!” and kill you, a demon wants to gradually talk you into killing yourself. This also may feature additional playable monsters, such as the gorgon and dullahan(Kickstarter stretch goals for the main rulebook that I don’t think we’re going to meet unfortunately), plus others if we can come up with more.

Overdose

A working title again. This will be a large collection of “drag-and-drop” tactical combat encounters for Eureka, for when a GM needs a fleshed out and challenging final showdown between the PCs and the bad guy goons. These will feature plenty of cover, alternate routes, and “woo roll elements”(stuff that can get knocked over, exploded, destroyed, etc. by stray bullets, thereby changing the environment in exciting and unexpected ways.). All of this is so that the GM doesn’t have to come up with all the complexities of a good Eureka combat encounter on the fly.

That’s about all I can think of right now. After Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy is fully released and the dust is settled, we will hold a vote with out patreon subscribers to find out what the fans most want us to work on next.

However, all of these things that I have mentioned are in a very raw state of completion, or even just in the idea stage. If you want to see all these projects, and more, release in the coming years, then RPG-making needs to be a long-term viable career for us. I, personally, am disabled and have a very hard time finding regular, sustainable work at “real jobs,” so this is especially important for my financial future. It’s about the only (marketable) skill I’m good at, and it’s something I enjoy doing, so I’m making this push now for my future.

The best way you can make this a viable long-term career for us is to support the Eureka Kickstarter (only 24-hours left at the time of posting this), buy our games, and subscribe to our Patreon.

The more successful the Kickstarter is, not only does more art and stuff get added to the Eureka rulebook and adventure modules, but the more buzz it generates, and the more buzz it generates the more journalistic support and more financial support we get. Even if it’s just for charity purposes to help me pay future bills when I can’t hold a normal job, pledging $10 is enough to get your name in the Eureka rulebook, and if you can’t give anything, we totally understand—we’d rather you put food on your table than go broke supporting our dreams. If you can share the Kickstarter to discord servers and the like in the last 24 hours of its crowdfunding window, or just share news of the game with people after the Kickstarter closes, that is a huge huge help on its own.

We, and especially I, am thankful beyond my ability to express in words for how much support the Kickstarter has already gotten, and the patreon subscribers whose support paid for all of our advertising budget to get Eureka as well-known as it is. This is a project of extremely professional scope and calibre, and I’m proud to say that we probably shouldn’t have been able to pull it off with as small a team as we are, we’re just that talented and persistent, but no matter how talented or persistent we are, it is the fans and supporters that make it possible for us to pursue a creative career. Thank you all.

24 hours left on the Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy Kickstarter, crowdfunding closes at 2:00 PM CST on Friday, May 10th! That’s mid-day tomorrow! Please support it while you still can! If you’re reading this after the Kickstarter has closed, you can support us through ko-fi or patreon, and if you’re a $5 subscriber or more to our patreon, you will get regular PDFs of increasingly finished beta versions of Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy and its adventure modules as we continue to work on finishing it using the Kickstarter money.

You can also help us by checking out our merchandise!

If you just want to play, you don’t have to pay. You can get a beta PDF of the Eureka rulebook plus character sheets and adventure modules FOR FREE from our website or itch.io page.

Join our TTRPG Book Club We nominate, vote on, and split into groups (based on schedule compatibility) differnt indie games, then discuss, just like a book club! Plus it’s just a great place to discuss and play new TTRPGs you might not be able to otherwise!

We hope to see you there, and that you will help our dreams come true and launch our careers as indie TTRPG developers with a bang by getting us to our base goal and blowing those stretch goals out of the water, and fight back against WotC's monopoly on the entire hobby. Wish us luck.

[love-me-like-a-reptile]

who up grinding they mammoth?

[scopostims]

sparks stimboard for @fightingtrim :•]

[ID: A 3x3 stimboard of 9 GIFs.

GIF 1: An angle grinder being used on a metal rod, a huge torrent of sparks flying off.

GIF 2: Someone standing at a slight distance using an angle grinder on a piece of metal, a streak of sparks flying off to the side.

GIF 3: A rod being pushed into a belt grinder, a stream of sparks flying downwards.

GIF 4: Slow motion footage of a log collapsing in a fire during the nighttime, a small explosion of sparks flying up.

GIF 5 (center): A heart-shaped sparkler and a star-shaped sparkler held next to each other, both lit and sparkling.

GIF 6: Slow motion footage of sparks flying in front of the camera due to something off screen, blue smoke drifting through the air.

GIF 7: A medium-light skinned person using an angle-grinder to cut a screw and hex nut off a rusted piece of machinery, sparks flying off to the right.

GIF 8: An angle grinder being used on a very large chain link, sparse sparks flying off.

GIF 9: An angle grinder being used on a circular piece of metal with many sparks flying downwards.

End ID]

[guerrilla-operator]

Mammoth Grinder // Cogs In The Machine

Suffering Out in the streets Pushed with their backs to the wall Safe inside Glued to a screen Always believe what the headlines read They're born to be cogs in the machine

[lafortis]

i think if you were in old-timey times you would have made a great smith. mayyyyybe the guy who calibrates catapults and trebuchets. but mostly a smith of some type.

you're not only correct, I have meant to get into smithing for a very very verrrry long time. ALMOST pulled the trigger on a $1500 worth of a used workshop, but I don't have a big enough backyard/don't live out in the country so I can't just burn charcoal and bang metal at all hours, and I'm pretty sure Alek doesn't want me doing it on his property lmao. and I wouldn't wanna do like small propane forge in the garage type shit, just the type of prick I am. wanna do it the ol' fashioned make your own charcoal type o way. anyway good take anon.

[reality-detective]

Bye-Bye 👋

[depravednotdeprived]

New England Metal and Hardcore Festival

[blazingcorpse]

𝕸𝖆𝖒𝖒𝖔𝖙𝖍 𝕲𝖗𝖎𝖓𝖉𝖊𝖗

“𝒰𝓃𝒹𝓎𝒾𝓃𝑔 𝒮��𝑒𝒸𝓉𝓇𝒶𝓁 𝑅𝑒𝓈𝑜𝓃𝒶𝓃𝒸𝑒”

[thisworldisablackhole]

Listening Log, November 2024

November is always kind of like the last month of the year in terms of big exciting new releases. There should still be a few sleeper releases in December, but I'll mostly be spending December catching up on older stuff and putting together my year end list. Anyway, lots of good stuff to get through.

FFO: HARDCORE AND CRUST INFLUENCED DEATH METAL Hardcore death crusters Mammoth Grinder have made an absolutely glorious comeback after a six year hiatus with their heaviest and most atmospherically dialed in release yet. These songs are just so crushing, definitely some of their most crust influenced songs too (especially "Decrease The Peace"), but the production on this thing harkens back to 2013's Underworlds; just the perfect amount of reverb to beef up the cosmic dread of each riff and guttural bellow. A beautiful return to form that fans of modern bands like Gatecreeper and Ripped to Shreds should love. Read the full review here.

FFO: EMOVIOLENCE

drive your plow over the bones of the dead might have a really long, attention grabbing name, but their riffs and songwriting chops completely speak for themselves. This band is insanely talented, no doubt. drive your plow effortlessly balance chaos and melody into a maelstrom of octave chords and fretboard mashing, but each song still retains unique properties that really reward attention and repeated listens. I highly suggest keeping the tracklist open for this one, because the songs fly by so fast and are connected by strings of feedback in a way that makes each song flow into the next like you're really watching a live performance. Not only is this one of the best screamo records of the year, it stands up against the classics that defined the genre. Read the full review here.

FFO: METALCORE

Counterparts dropped a surprise EP early November that sent vibrations throughout the heavy music community. Counterparts have been one of the most beloved and consistent bands in metalcore for years now, but I always felt like they were consistent to a fault—always good, but stagnant, never really pushing the envelope or expanding upon their established formula. Well, this EP changes that. Heaven Let Them Die seemingly takes influence from Brendan Murphy's other band END and ends up being the heaviest damn thing the band has ever done. The melodic leads have been pared back significantly, but these songs are still punctuated by swellings of grief and unrestrained rage that makes this just as memorable as anything else in their catalog. If this marks a new direction for the band, well, it's about time they switched things up.

FFO: ACOUSTIC FOLK

Haley Heynderickx's long awaited follow up to 2018's I Need to Start a Garden has arrived, and it's beautiful. To be honest, I never got into her last record, despite the obvious fanfare, but when this one dropped I jumped at the opportunity to get acquainted. Seed of a Seed just feels like an instantly classic folk album. Timeless, subdued—an expression of quietness that hides a rich world of emotion to uncover. The music really matches the album cover too, it just has a really earthy, grounded tone to it, like I can smell the soil clinging to the roots of every guitar strum and drawl of the strings.

FFO: MELODIC ANARCHO-PUNK

Without an ounce of hyperbole, Straw Man Army are simply one of those once-in-a-generation punk bands that are truly pushing the envelope of what punk can be. Not by reinventing the wheel, but by casting aside the self-perpetuating constraints the genre imposes upon itself, and grasping for influences that fall outside the fault line. At the end of the day, Straw Man Army are just doing what everyone else does: combining different aspects of the wheel into something that hopefully displays a shred of novelty, but it's the way that they do so while still remaining arguably more punk than any other band in the scene that is so damn impressive. Earthworks is one of the most original and thought provoking punk albums ever made, and will probably remain so for quite some time. Read the full review here.

FFO: METALCORE, BREAKCORE, FROMJOY, STATIC DRESS

Combining metalcore with dance music is not a new idea, bands have been doing it since the early 2000s, but there's been a few bands popping up lately that are doing this in increasingly tasteful and unique ways. No more ham-fisted trancecore please, we want breakcore, vaporwave and glitchy IDM. fallingwithscissors display a lot of cool ideas on this EP, but also a ton of potential that the band has not quite tapped into yet. This is as enjoyable as it is clunky. They are clearly just throwing things against the wall right now to see what sticks, so it's hard to fault them for what feels like a necessary step in their evolution. I'm very excited to see if they succeed to tighten up the concept for their next release.

FFO: POST-HARDCORE, EMO, POP PUNK

Interpersonal came out of nowhere and blew me away. This little-known band from Missouri deserves to be huge, and I think they will be one day if they maintain this quality of production and songwriting. This is their debut full-length, but it feels like it was made by music scene veterans. The Long Bright Dark morphs in a few different directions during it's run-time, but all of its ideas are executed to perfection, and they maintain a surprising sense of cohesion considering the diverse range of genre aptitudes that are covered here. It all adds up to a package that is slick, memorable, and endlessly replayable. One of the best post-hardcore albums of the year, hands down. Interpersonal has a Long Bright future ahead of them. Read the full review here.

FFO: BRUTAL, TECHNICAL DEATH METAL

Defeated Sanity are one of the most celebrated brutal death metal bands alive, and it's easy to see why. They utilize the same addictingly grotesque production techniques as some of the most vile slam bands, but when it comes to pure musical proficiency, these guys are leagues ahead of almost everyone else. Just look at the second half of 2016's Disposal Of The Dead // Dharmata, that shit is basically just free-jazz played by metal musicians. These guys could easily be a world class band if they toned down the abrasiveness, but Deafeated Sanity's refusal to dumb down or reject brutal aesthetics to make their music more accessible makes them one of the greatest underground acts of all time. Endless respect. Chronicles of Lunacy is easily one of the best death metal albums of the year.

FFO: METALCORE, POP

I talked about Poppy's new album in my last roundup, but now that it's out in the world, I'm putting it in here again, because this album ended up being way more diverse than I could have ever expected. While I enjoyed the first few singles for this album, I was a little worried that FIFTEEN tracks of metalcore Poppy would get stale super fast. Thankfully, Negative Spaces retains a significant amount of Poppy's signature synth-pop weirdness, and ends up sounding more like a proper follow-up to 2020's I Disagree. The difference is that this time around, Poppy's metal influence is given ample room to blossom into fully formed ideas instead of being restrained to a collection of rock opera mashups. The track list ebbs and flows between moments of blistering aggression and dancefloor bangers that coalesce into a theme park ride that never gets boring, despite it's moments of derivative indulgence. If you look closely, it's pretty easy to see which tracks are just imitations other bands (BMTH, Knocked Loose, Loathe, Evanescence), but Poppy brings everything together with her individual charm into a package that is just so much god damn fun, and that's all that matters.

[roseverdict]

bad bike lockup: looping your lock through the bike frame and nothing else

okay bike lockup: looping your lock through the bike frame and an immobile pole like a street sign

good bike lockup: looping your lock through the bike frame, the back wheel, the front wheel if you can manage it, and an actual bike rack

????? bike lockup: looping your lock through the bike frame, the back wheel, and the grated door of the propane tank storage unit at a gas station

[d3ath-666]

[softpine]

Are any of your ocs Stanley cup girlies?

my mommmm is obsessed with big water bottles and mixing weird water things together so i'm gonna have to say no because i wouldn't wish this hell on anyone else. it has a liminal energy to it. very cursed

[cognitohazard]

I HATE WHEN PERFORMERS USE ANGLE GRINDERS ON STAGE BITCH NO ONE IS WEARING PROPER EYE PROTECTION!!!!

[guerrilla-operator]

MAMMOTH GRINDER

[fierykitten2]

An incomplete list of Judas Priest songs I associate with Pokémon:

Breaking the Law: Quax, Spriggie, the Chars, Luna, Knight, Blueberry and Cherry, my aces in Scarlet and Violet. Usually at the same time

United: the same but usually only one quartet at at time. Also Quax and Spriggie are more in charge there (they sing the “so give me hope!” lines plus the first half of the quiet chorus at the end then the Chars join in for the second half of the quiet chorus and then the Paradoxes come in after that)

Grinder (I’ll get to songs that aren’t on British Steel eventually I swear): Quaquaval, especially Quax. It doesn’t help that there seem to be bird metaphors in the song

Metal Gods (I swear they’re not all from British Steel): Iron Valiant and Iron Leaves, especially Knight and Cherry

Living After Midnight (dammit another British Steel song I’m really bad at this): Quax and Spriggie

You Don’t Have to Be Old to Be Wise (no comment): Char the Armarouge and Cherry

Love Bites (finally one that isn’t from British Steel): Spriggie, with Char (the Ceruledge) as his victim (yes I feel bad about this being a straight ship when this is a Judas Priest song. I’m very sorry. If it helps, I’m sure Spriggie would do the same to Quax if he could (though I’ve been imagining he does it to Char to try and cheer her up and obviously Quax isn’t known for being an edgy sword knight))

Delivering the Goods: Spriggie and Cherry. It’s the stuff about stealing hearts

Riding On the Wind: the Proto Beasts and Neo Swords

No Surrender: as of yesterday, Armarouge and Ceruledge, especially the Chars

Rock Hard, Ride Free, Freewheel Burning, Hell Bent for Leather, Delivering the Goods (again) and as of yesterday Rapid Fire (another song off British Steel?): Gouging Fire and Iron Boulder (I associate Delivering the Goods more with Spriggie and Cherry)

Bonus: I don’t really associate it with a Pokémon (well, I associate the first line with Iron Crown because of another song I associate with the Proto Beasts and Neo Swords) but I associate the song Some Heads Are Gonna Roll with Falcon even though it’s a song about a corrupt government (I think), not having godly powers you don’t know how to control

[k-i-l-l-e-r-b-e-e-6-9]

𝔇𝔬𝔪𝔦𝔫𝔲𝔰 𝔓𝔯𝔞𝔢𝔩𝔦𝔦 - 𝔊𝔯𝔦𝔫𝔡𝔢𝔯